And now for something extra loud

Do Like a Duck Does
By Judy Hindley
Illustrated by Ivan Bates
2002, Candlewick Press

A happy accident brought this super-fun book into our lives.

Leery of lugging a proper selection of storybooks on a cross-country flight, we asked Grandpa Ed to keep an eye out for kids' titles on his normal thrift-store rounds.

He arrived for our shared vacation with, bless his heart, a hefty cardboard box that Rosie happily plundered for most of the week. She enjoys any new book, but it quickly became clear that "Do Like a Duck Does" stood bill and tail feathers above the rest.

This book is a joy to read aloud, combining perfectly paced rhyme with a comic storyline just right for toddlers (one so exciting, in fact, that you may choose to reserve it for non-bedtime readings). Rosie screams in delight as an ill-intentioned fox falls in with a line of ducklings, trying to convince their skeptical mother that he too has wings and waddles.

Bate's illustrations add oodles of character -- softening the fox's menace with buffoonery, and gracing crafty Mama Duck with considerable pluck:

"Look!" says Mama.
"What a lovely patch of muck!
Jump in the puddle, dear.
Show you're a duck!
Lots of bugs and beetles
swimming in the scum.
Open up your beak, dear.
Yum!
Yum!
Yum!"...